Green Fire & Ice
by Animaltalker
Summary: The story of what happened when Lennie caught his first wife in the shower with the redheaded guy.


They say jealousy is a green-eyed monster, but you couldn't prove it by Lennie Briscoe. All he could see was red. This made the second time he'd caught his wife with another man. The first time had been in a bar, she'd been kissing some shoe salesman named Joe. If he'd been armed, that guy would have been dead, as it was he threw him out of the bar by the scruff of his neck. This time Lennie curled one long lean hand around the interloper's throat lifting him out of the shower, and coincidentally Lennie's wife.

He threw the red-haired man to the floor, "Get your clothes on and get out of my house forever," he said in a low menacing growl.

Lennie hadn't raised his voice for fear of waking his daughters who were sleeping in a nearby bedroom. The other man scrambled to his feet, rubbing his throat.

When it looked as though he might hesitate, Lennie's wife found her voice. "Please go," she said emphatically. The man quickly grabbed his clothes and in a few moments the front door could be heard closing.

The other man forgotten, Lennie turned his blue grey eyes on his cheating wife and began advancing on her, she gave ground as his temper mounted with each step. "Is that what you want, what you need? Not a man to love you sweetly and gently with his whole heart, but a guy to fuck you?"

Before she could answer, Lennie picked her up and threw her down on the bed, laying his clothed body on top of hers. He crushed her lips with a rough kiss, preventing her from answering him. He began fondling her breasts roughly and then bit her throat.

"No, Lennie stop, not like this, please!" she begged him to stop.

He rolled off of her, and stared at her for a moment. "You'll spread your legs for him, but not for your husband?" he asked in outrage.

"Lennie, you've never been rough with me, it's not like you to be that way. Please don't let what I've done make you someone you're not," she said, as tears ran down her face.

"Why did you do this, why?" Lennie asked sadly as he sat up on the bed next to her.

"I don't know," she answered, sounding like she truly didn't know the answer.

"God, what an answer," Lennie said as he threw his head back. "At least if you knew why you did it, we could work on the problem," he continued, and then sighed.

"I guess it's that I'm lonely, and frightened and bit angry too," she said, as she caressed his back.

He arched away from her touch a bit, not wanting her to distract him with sex, "I can understand your being lonely with the hours I've been working, and I guess every cop's wife is frightened to some extent, but what are you angry about?" he asked, sounding bewildered.

"That I'm still a cop's wife," she said, and with that he abruptly stood up and moved away from her. He found a pack of cigarettes on the bureau and lit one.

"We've had this conversation before Gloria, I'm not leaving the force," he said, as he blew the first puff of smoke from the cigarette.

"I love how you call this a conversation. I bring the subject up of your doing something less dangerous than being a cop, and you dig your heels in and say no," Gloria countered as she found a robe to put on, as it was now obvious they were not going to be resolving this argument in bed. "You know it's not exactly like you're NYPD's favorite cop anymore, not after what Danny did to you and Gus and the rest of the guys in the SIU," she added, despite the fact that she knew that would upset him more.

"Shut up about that. We're getting pretty far a field here aren't we?" Lennie asked, trying to use shame to gain points in the argument.

"Oh that's right, let's not have an adult conversation, let's have a fight and you can get as dirty as you want to now. Be all high and mighty and righteous, because I'm the one who cheated," she said and dropped down on the bed.

"Oh for Christ sakes, don't go getting melodramatic on me," Lennie replied.

Gloria's head shot up at Lennie's use of a Christian curse. "You know, maybe there are just too many things we don't see eye to eye on," she said. Lennie gave her an odd look, wondering what her remark was suppose to me.

Neither of them had noticed how their voices had gotten louder as they argued.

"Mommy, Daddy what's wrong? Why are you yelling at each other?" a sleepy, little 5-year old girl, with long dark unruly curls and blue grey eyes, dressed in a white flannel nightgown with blue flowers, stood in their bedroom doorway, clutching a purple panda bear that was almost as big as her.

Lennie quickly snuffed out his cigarette in an ashtray and picked his little girl up, perching her in the crook of his left arm so her head could rest on his shoulder, while his right hand stroked her back and her hair. "Oh Cath, Mommy and Daddy were just being silly. We're sorry we woke you up. We'll try not to be so loud. You want Daddy or Mommy, to tuck you back in?" he asked.

"You, Daddy," she mumbled into his shoulder, already half asleep.

When Lennie returned to the bedroom, Gloria looked at him and sighed, "For Cathy's sake and Julia's can you try to forgive me?"

"Yeah, for them I can sure give it a shot," Lennie promised.

He undressed down to his boxers and got into bed. Gloria cuddled up next to him as she usually did, and murmured something about their going to counseling. He grunted agreement and she fell asleep, but he found he couldn't sleep as easily.

He lay there awake wondering, 'How long has she been cheating on me? How many other men has she been with? Maybe I can find a way to forgive her, but how can I forget? What's wrong with me that I don't satisfy her? Other women find me attractive; I'm propositioned almost daily, even though I wear my wedding ring. God, this is going to drive me nuts.'

After about an hour of lying in bed not sleeping, he got up and had a drink, a double scotch on the rocks. He liked the dichotomy of the cold ice and the fire of the scotch as it burnt down his throat and warmed him. Maybe this was part of his answer, a little liquid memory eraser.


End file.
